M. Hyland - Carry Me Down

‘What’s in the big bag?’ asks the tallest boy, whose hair is blond at the top, with small greasy tails hanging out the back.

‘Shopping,’ I say.

‘Doesn’t look like shopping.’

‘Looks like a colourful box.’

I move back a little so that I’m against the balcony wall and realise I’m only making them more curious.

‘It’s a remote-controlled car,’ I say.

‘Give it here,’ says the boy with different coloured eyes.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘But let me get it started first. I’ll do a demo for you.’

I take the car out of its box, and try to make sure they don’t see my hands shaking. I put the batteries in and think about what I’m going to do. I make the car drive along the balcony, all the way to the other end, and make it turn around when it reaches the stairs. They watch.

‘Give us a cigarette,’ I say. ‘I’ll show youse something.’

The boy with greasy tails gives me a cigarette, which I put in the passenger seat of the car, and then, from about ten feet away, I drive the car over to him.

‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘I’m after having my fags delivered!’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Fuck.’

I wish I hadn’t said it. They stare at me and then tell me to go down the other end of the balcony. I take the cigarette out of the car and put it in my pocket and make sure they see.

They call me back.

‘Wanna join?’ asks the boy with tails.

‘OK,’ I say.

‘But you have to give us your car,’ says the shorter boy. ‘For keeps. It’ll be instead of the membership fee.’

I crouch down to put my new car back in its box. I try to stay calm and I stall a while by making the batteries fall out, so there’s time to stop myself from crying. I swallow a few times before I look up.

‘Does your gang have a name?’ I ask.

‘Yeah,’ says the one leaning against the balcony wall with a smoke behind his ear, ‘we’re called The Fangs.’

They all laugh and I laugh too, even though I know they are laughing at me: they are not called The Fangs. I give them my new car and we shake hands.

They tell me their names. The leaders are Mark, the tallest one with the greasy tails, and Colman, the one with the different coloured eyes.

‘One more thing,’ says Mark, ‘you gotta do a job before you are a fully fledged member.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve gotta go to the new housing estate and bring us back a brand new sink.’

‘Yeah,’ says Colman. ‘And by five o’clock tomorrow.’

They ask me to swear that if I am ever caught doing anything I’ll say I don’t know them, and they promise that they’ll say they don’t know me.

‘Sure,’ I say and we shake hands again.

My hand is no damper than their hands.

They ask me which tower I live in and the number of my flat. I tell them the tower, but give them the number of Mrs McGahern’s flat. I should have given them a random number from a different floor.

‘But you better not come around,’ I say. ‘Me mam’s deaf and blind and she gets very upset with surprises.’

I am getting better at lying. My face doesn’t feel hot and my body doesn’t shake. I am steadier on my feet and stronger. Mark tells me about how the building sites work. First the surveyors come and then trenches are laid and then the concrete is poured into the trenches.

‘Has anybody ever got stuck in the wet concrete?’ I ask.

They laugh and pass looks. ‘We better leave you to it,’ says Colman and, at his signal, they all turn and walk away.

A few minutes later Mark comes back. ‘Better not forget,’ he says. ‘See you at five tomorrow at the bottom of the stairs.’

My brand new car is in its box under his armpit.

I’m not afraid of them. I’m only afraid that they’ll humiliate me. I will do what I’ve agreed to do. I will steal a sink from an empty house that doesn’t belong to anybody.

I go across the road to the new housing estate, and after the workmen have gone, I walk along the half-finished walls for a while. When I’m ready, I go to the back of one of the new houses and climb through a window wet with white paint, which I get on my trousers and hands. The fresh paint smells like marzipan and so I breathe through my mouth to stop it getting into my head.

I go into the living room and sit on the soft, new carpet. There’s so much clean, spare room. I lie on my back and roll around for a while. I take off my trousers to see what the carpet feels like against my bare legs and then I take my underpants off to see what the new carpet feels like on my bum.

I get dressed and go to the bathroom and sit on the new floor and play with the tap fittings, which are in the shape of dolphins. It’s a nice, big house. I’d like to live in a house that hasn’t been used.

I pull at the sink, but it’s fixed to the wall with bolts. I leave. It’s getting dark and walking though the trenches is like being in a maze. I write in the wet concrete, and break a piece of string that builders have set to mark where the rooms of the new house are going to be. All the time I half hope the gang is watching me.

I fantasise about living in one of these new houses, bigger and cleaner than our flat, with bigger windows. And they have stairs. I miss the stairs in my grandmother’s cottage that led up to the bedroom where my mother and father slept.

It’s nearly six o’clock and I haven’t found a sink. I’m hungry and tired and so I go home. I’ll get the sink tomorrow.

My mother is in the kitchen. She sits on the floor, her legs crossed, her arms on her knees. There are bits of broken plate on the floor. She looks as though she’s been crying; strands of wet hair stick to her face.

‘What happened?’ I ask.

She looks me up and down. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’ve got paint all over your trousers.’

I want to tell her. I want to tell her everything, about the new houses and the gang, but not now. I want to know why she’s been crying.

‘I was just helping to paint a wall downstairs. With some people from the community centre.’

‘You should soak your clothes.’

‘But why are you sitting on the floor? Why’ve you been crying?’

‘Sit and I’ll tell you,’ she says.

Although she probably means for me to sit at the table, I move some bits of broken plate and sit on the floor.

‘I was squeezing a lemon and it was so dry I felt like I’d just finished strangling somebody trying to get the little bit of juice out of it.’

I look carefully at her eyes, and she looks away.

‘I was furious at nothing. Furious at this tiny thing. I picked up a plate your father left on the sideboard this morning and threw it against the wall.’

‘Do you want me to do anything? Do you want me to help?’

She holds my hand. ‘Yes, you can help. You can study hard, pass your Leaving with flying colours, become a dentist or a pilot or something useful, marry a woman who has a brain and have at least four children. And sing “Auld Lang Syne” at my funeral.’

‘But I can’t sing,’ I say.

‘Play it on a record then,’ she says.

‘The record player wouldn’t fit in the coffin.’

And then we are silent until she says, ‘I love you more than I should. No matter what you do, I’ll love you and that’s something you’ll never understand.’

‘Yes I will,’ I say. I fold myself over and rest my head in her lap.

‘Get up, John. I’m going to get into bed. I’m very tired.’

‘Again? You’re always tired and sleepy.’

She yawns as she stands and I watch her go.

It’s my first day at the Ballymun National School. My mother comes with me to the zebra crossing and points at the grey school building. We are only fifty feet from home. ‘There it is,’ she says, smiling, and waving her long, thin arm.